LAURA INGALLS and Daniel Boone never had it so good. Log-cabin living used to mean roughing it, but today's log homes offer perks such as cathedral ceilings, skylights, and stone fireplaces.

American Log Homes, Inc. started manufacturing log-home kits in the Ozarks in the 1977. Back then, it was more common to sell the home-building kits for use as rustic cabins for weekend trips. Nowadays, most customers use the log homes as their primary residences, so size and sophistication are key.
American Log Homes, Inc., offers more than sixty-five models, from its cozy 572-square foot Osage design to the colossal 4,000-square foot Fort Hays model, which has a three-car garage. But the company's most popular kits are customs designs.

Owner Clyde Cremer says, "We take one house at time and manufacture it and check everything over before shipping it out and moving on to the next one."
The log homes are made of seasoned pine, spruce, or western redcedar from Canada, Missouri, Utah and Colorado. A double tongue-and-groove is milled into each log. The lumber is precut for window and door opening, and holes are pre-drilled for spikes and screws. The logs are numbered and an instruction manual shows how they fit together.

"They don't assemble quite as easily as the Lincoln Logs toy construction set," Clyde warns. He also cautions that log-home construction isn't synonymous with low cost. In fact, log homes are typically pricier than conventional construction since most homeowners tend to put more upgrades in them.
Standard models range from $18,185 to $140,635 before shipping, and total construction costs can be one hundred dollars or more per square foot, he says.

For the look of a log home without the expense, the company offers log siding. But from the Ozarks to Colorado, there's no shortage of people willing to shell out a tidy sum for log-cabin luxury.